Lessons · Pharmacy · look-alike, sound-alike names
Look-alike, sound-alike
Some drug names look or sound so much like others that the only defence is a procedure: read the whole name, check the strength against what that drug is made in, and stop when something does not fit.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
These pairs agree on the first four or five letters and disagree on everything that matters. A name read at a glance in a busy hour is the single most common way the wrong medicine gets into the right bag.
How to think about it
Read the whole name, not the beginning of it. Then ask whether the rest of the script agrees with the name you read: the strength, the form, the directions and what the patient has had before. When one of those does not agree, stop and hand it to the pharmacist. A technician's job here is to catch and pass on, not to decide.
Worked example
Read to the end of the nameThe first four letters are exactly where these pairs agree.
Check the strength against the strengths that drug is made inA strength that does not exist for that drug is an error you have just caught.
Check the sig against what the drug is taken forA once-a-week sig on a once-a-day drug is a question, not a fill.
Stop and hand it to the pharmacistWith what you found. The decision is theirs and the catch was yours.
Your turn
Write who a technician hands a suspected wrong-drug prescription to.
stop and hand it to the
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Assuming tall man lettering will save you. Mixed-case name styling helps on the shelf label and does nothing for a handwritten script, a phoned order or a name typed into a search box.